As far as on-air newscaster flubs go, this isn't on the level of turning Mike Huckabee's name into profanity — or beginning your first news segment ever with profanity, for that matter — but it's still pretty embarrassing in that "I cannot stop laughing" sort of way. During his recent attempt to continuously report the weather for 34 hours straight in a segment called Rokerthon, Today show meteorologist Al Roker forgot to turn off his microphone during one of his allowed bathroom breaks during the continuously streaming segment — thus, broadcasting his trip to the restroom to anyone who was watching Rokerthon at the moment. ICYMI, Twitter had a field day with it.
Sadly, there doesn't seem to be any footage of this major flub — though this is the Internet, so I'm sure that's only a matter of time — but, ever the good sport, Roker did admit to his mistake during a behind-the-scenes look at the making of his marathon weathercast on Today Thursday morning.
"On my break, I went to heed nature's call, and uh...we forgot that my mic was on," Roker explained, in an amused — though slightly embarrassed, obviously — tone. "We gave new meaning to the phrase 'live-stream.'"
I have to hand it to him: Broadcasting your bathroom break to millions of viewers is a pretty yikes-worthy thing to do, but, "live-stream"? OK, that was a great joke.
Image: NBC
